Frequentatives of Derived Verbs in Q(u)enya

Frequentatives of Derived Verbs in Q(u)enya

By Atwe on Sat, 01/05/2019 - 10:42
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Quenya

I have trawled through Q(u)enya verbs in Eldamo to see if I can glean any idea how derived verbs form their frequentatives. I have identified the following ones, are there any others I have missed?

  • tin-/tinta-/tintila-/tintina- (not sure if the freq. is coming from the base verb or the causative here)
  • fara-/fafarra-
  • naina-/nainaina- (both glossed the same so may not be a tru freq.)
  • ola-/ololla-
  • sirya-/sisíria- (the latter is unglossed but presumable is a freq. of the former, but there's also the consonantal sir- so the case is ambiguous)
  • ulya-/ululla-
  • tanta-/tantila- (this is EQ but in line with tinta-/tintila-)
  • ororia- (this was deleted)

So plain a-verbs and ya-verbs seem more or less follow the pattern seen in consonantal verbs (stem duplication, doubled/strengthened final consonant or lengthened sundóma). Whether tintila- tantila- is indicative of how ta-verbs form their frequentatives, hard to say.

It might be also possible to employ the prefix vor(o)- to form a frequentative of a verb.

Any thoughts?

Submitted by Lokyt Sat, 01/05/2019 - 13:09

It should perhaps be noted that √EN is glossed as verbal "to go on doing" in PE 17. So maybe constructions like *en-kwet- were rather frequentative ("to go on saying") in PQ. and only later (in CE.? OQ.?) the meaning of en- shifted to the "(just) one more time" semantics we know from "modern" Quenya.

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Submitted by Paul Strack Sun, 01/06/2019 - 06:24

The verb tintila- isn’t a frequentative. It is a combination of TIN and THIL and thus originally has a meaning like “sparkle-shine” = “twinkle”. tintina- shows reduplication, and might be some kind of frequentative, however.

I also doubt EQ tantila- is a frequentative either. Its gloss “hop” doesn’t sound like a repeated action.

The rest look like plausible frequentatives to me, though. I’d add deleted tatalta- to the list, as well as sapsarra- “keep on rubbing”. Tolkien seems to have experimented with a variety of frequentative patterns, but the most common seems to be “reduplicate the first two letters”, so I’d default to that.

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Submitted by Paul Strack Sun, 01/06/2019 - 14:36

A hop is simply a smaller jump. “Hopping” is frequentative only in the sense that “walking” is, in that it can represent an ongoing series of actions because it is easier to make a series of small jumps than it is to make a series of large jumps. But jump can be used in the same way: “she is jumping around”. And hop can definitely be used for a single action: “he hopped over the fence”.

With EQ tanta- vs. tantila- the distinctions come from the semantics, not from the form of the word. If the form has any significance, I’d guess that it might be some kind of diminutive. But I looked at EQ verbs of similar form and saw no obvious patterns.

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